In an age of artificial intelligence, algorithm-driven feeds and technology that seems to evolve almost by the week, it is perhaps no surprise that so many people are looking to the past.
Across fashion, music, photography and entertainment, the past is making an unlikely comeback. Y2K clothing is back on the streets. Vinyl records are once again prized possessions.
Analogue cameras, retro gaming, grainy photographs and physical music media have found new audiences among people who did not necessarily experience their heyday the first time around.
Gen Z's nostalgia
For some Gen Z, however, much of what they are nostalgic for is something they never experienced.
A teenager can feel an attachment to 1990s fashion without having lived through the decade. Someone born after the heyday of CDs can feel emotionally connected to physical music. A young person can develop an affection for analogue photography, old television shows or retro gaming despite never having experienced these things when they were new.
According to Carmen Murray, a marketing futurist and cultural forecaster, "people aren’t necessarily nostalgic for the past, they’re nostalgic for what they believe the past gave them, that the present is taking away".
She describes this as part of an “Analogue Renaissance”, a cultural and lifestyle shift where people return to physical, tactile and non-digital technologies to find balance and authenticity.
“Nostalgia is a way and a means to reinvent for future promise,” said Murray, particularly during periods of what she describes as “future shock”.
Murray said nostalgia serves as a psychological defence mechanism against modern stressors such as technological anxiety, isolation and social division by offering emotional warmth, predictability, and a stable sense of identity.
"By recalling the past, individuals can counteract feelings of loneliness and instability during turbulent times," she said.
Murray said some Gen Z can take Y2K fashion, old music, analogue cameras and retro gaming and combine them with contemporary aesthetics and values.
"The result is not an exact reproduction of the past, but a remix. You don't necessarily have to have lived something to feel connected to it. We inherit stories. We inherit traditions. We inherit music. We inherit photographs. We inherit recipes, rituals, language and memories from people who came before us," she said.
Murray believes the younger generation may not be nostalgic for the actual 1990s, but nostalgic for what they believe the 1990s represented.
"A time when there was still a separation between being online and being offline, when you didn't have your entire life sitting in your pocket, when music was something you could hold, when photographs weren't instantly uploaded, and when communities and rituals were more physical.
"They are discovering the past through their parents, through old television, music, TikTok, YouTube, fashion and culture. It becomes borrowed nostalgia," said Murray.
Nostalgia with emotional meaning
Sanam Naran, counselling psychologist at Conscious Psychology, said people were rarely nostalgic for history exactly as it happened.
"We are nostalgic for the version of the past that became emotionally meaningful to us," said Naran.
For Naran, nostalgia can function almost like a psychological audit of the present. What we miss can reveal what we believe we have lost.
"Nostalgia can be a very socially acceptable way of grieving change. Saying “I miss when we used to...” can sometimes be easier than saying “I feel overwhelmed by the way we live now.” Modern life gives us extraordinary convenience, but convenience does not automatically create emotional satisfaction," said Naran.
In South Africa, Naran said, nostalgic conversations often revolve around a very particular kind of social life, neighbours knowing one another, cousins spending holidays together, large Sunday lunches and children disappearing outside to play.
She said people seem to be nostalgic for a texture of life: grainy photographs, imperfect video, wired headphones, handwritten notes, old bedrooms, disposable cameras, television static.
"These things signify a world that feels less polished and perhaps therefore more believable," said Naran.
She said the faster the present changes, the more psychologically valuable the familiar becomes.
"Human beings need continuity. We need some sense that yesterday, today and tomorrow belong to the same story. AI is accelerating a shift that was already underway. We increasingly encounter photographs we cannot immediately trust, content made specifically for our preferences, algorithmically generated recommendations and communication that can be produced without another human necessarily sitting on the other side of it," said Naran.
She said that, against that backdrop, nostalgia offers something emotionally powerful: evidence of a world that feels fixed, that the photograph was taken, the CD existed, the handwriting belonged to somebody.
"So I don't think the fascination with the past necessarily means people want to live there. It may mean the present is changing so quickly that people are searching for things that feel tangible enough to hold onto," said Naran.
The personal versus the fake nostalgia
According to futurist and economist Bronwyn Williams of Fluxtrends, there is personal nostalgia and fake nostalgia.
The personal nostalgia is the memories of childhood, early adulthood, family, friends and periods of life that felt easier.
Then there is what Williams describes as “fake nostalgia”: the commercial recycling of the past to sell products in the present.
“Fake nostalgia is the consumerism and marketing,” said Williams, pointing to everything from retro-looking fridges and overpriced appliances to a fashion industry that repeatedly returns to previous decades for inspiration.
“It is just repackaging.”
The distinction matters because nostalgia is not necessarily a straightforward desire to return to the past. Sometimes, it is simply a response to the pressures of the present.
Williams argues that personal nostalgia is shaped by lived experience. For many people, childhood represents a period when life was less complicated, regardless of the circumstances in which they grew up.
“We tend to forget the bad times for the good times,” she said, noting how photo albums and social media feeds often become collections of life's highlights rather than accurate records of everyday experience.
“We are always looking for escape and imagining our life in a different time or space,” Williams said.
taschica.pillay@nationalmg.co.za